David St. John Reads Larry Levis

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker: Poetry Episode: David St. John Reads Larry Levis
Release Date: April 23, 2025
Host: Kevin Young, Poetry Editor of The New Yorker
Guest: David St. John, Poet and Editor

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Introduction

The New Yorker: Poetry podcast, produced by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, features readings and conversations with notable figures in the poetry world. In the April 23, 2025 episode titled David St. John Reads Larry Levis, host Kevin Young welcomes David St. John, an esteemed poet and the editor of Swirl and Vortex, a forthcoming collection of Larry Levis's poems scheduled for 2026. David brings with him a wealth of experience, including numerous poetry collections and prestigious awards such as the Rome Fellowship and the OB Hardison Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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Reading of Larry Levis's "Picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard"

Timestamp: [04:00]

David St. John begins the episode by reading Larry Levis's poignant poem, "Picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard," originally published in The New Yorker on November 10, 1980. The poem narrates the reflective memories of a vineyard worker, interweaving personal loss, community bonds, and the enduring impact of past experiences.

Notable Excerpts:

• “I still have a scarlet where a friend sliced open my right index finger once in a cutting shed...” ([04:09])
• “At 17, I discovered Parlier California, with its sad topless bar and its one Main street and its opium.” ([04:09])
• “Nothing's wrong, you're just dying.” ([14:43])

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Discussion on Larry Levis's Poetic Themes and Style

Timestamp: [02:12] - [18:19]

Key Points:

• Personal Connection: David expresses a deep personal connection to Larry Levis’s work, highlighting their shared upbringing near Fresno and their long-standing friendship since David was 18.

• Themes of Memory and Ghosts: Larry’s poetry is characterized by the recuperation of the past and the presence of ghosts—both familial and environmental. David emphasizes that these ghosts are not ephemeral but material and intimate, offering a healing reflection on past experiences.

• Cinematic Quality and Structure: The poem's structure, characterized by its singular stanza and use of timestamps, lends a cinematic feel, allowing readers to vividly visualize the depicted scenes and emotions.

• Complex Characters: Figures like T and Angel Dominguez are portrayed with depth, embodying aspects of community and personal struggle. T’s joviality contrasts with Angel’s somber demeanor, illustrating the nuanced human experiences within the vineyard.

Notable Discussion Points:

• David describes Larry’s ability to create an omniscient presence within his work, blending past and present seamlessly ([12:26]).

• The poem serves as an elegy, reflecting on personal loss and broader themes of fate and survival ([18:19]).

• The narrative technique allows for multiple intertwined stories, providing a rich, layered understanding of the self and the community ([13:33]).

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Editing and Compiling Larry Levis's Collected Poems

Timestamp: [20:23] - [23:47]

David shares insights into his role as the editor of Swirl and Vortex, Larry Levis's collected poems. He explains the archaeological process of compiling the collection, which involved meticulous excavation of archives, analyzing drafts, and making editorial decisions that stayed true to Larry’s original voice.

Key Points:

• Collaborative Effort: Assisted by associate editors James Ciano and Liz Johnson, David navigated Larry’s increasingly illegible handwriting and extensive drafts to unearth previously unpublished works like "Prayer" and "Homage to Willie Mays".

• Deep Understanding: Years of friendship allowed David to intuitively understand Larry’s intentions, facilitating a faithful and respectful compilation of his work ([22:06]).

• Preservation of Legacy: David aims for the collection to cement Larry’s legacy, presenting his work in a way that highlights his achievements and unique voice ([23:23]).

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Reading of David St. John's "The Shore"

Timestamp: [28:53]

David transitions to sharing his own poetry by reading "The Shore," which was published in the May 9, 1977 issue of The New Yorker and later became the title poem of his second book. The poem explores themes of memory, disillusionment, and the fluid boundaries between land and sea, reflecting David’s personal experiences both on the California and Atlantic shores.

Notable Excerpts:

• “The Shore so the tide forgets as morning grows too far...” ([28:57])
• “What we forgive. If you wake soon wake me.” ([32:55])

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Discussion on "The Shore" and Its Themes

Timestamp: [32:55] - [42:31]

Key Points:

• Duality of Locations: David explains his fascination with the contrasting experiences of the California and Atlantic shores, using the shore as a metaphor for boundaries and impermanence.

• Personal Relationships: The poem delves into complex relationships, particularly the dynamic between fathers and children, highlighting feelings of envy and betrayal ([36:24]).

• Use of Second Person: The second-person narrative creates an intimate address, drawing readers into the personal and emotional landscape of the poem ([34:31]).

• Symbolism of Parentheses: Parentheses symbolize hope and inclusion, suggesting that despite loss and impermanence, there is a space for forgiveness and renewal ([38:49]).

Notable Discussion Points:

• Impermanence and Memory: David emphasizes that impermanence is a central theme, with the shore representing the ever-changing nature of experiences and relationships ([34:31]).

• Emotional Depth: The poem captures the nuanced emotions involved in relationships, such as the tension between forgiveness and lingering resentment ([42:03]).

• Hopeful Ending: Despite the poem’s exploration of loss and complexity, it culminates in a hopeful note, urging awakening and renewal ([40:11]).

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Kevin Young and David St. John reflecting on the profound nature of poetry as both a means of personal expression and a tool for preserving and honoring the past. David’s contributions as both a poet and an editor highlight the enduring impact of Larry Levis’s work and the intricate connections between memory, place, and identity.

Additional Information:

• "Picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard" and "The Shore" are available on newyorker.com.
• The anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025 is available for purchase.
• David St. John's forthcoming book, Swirl and Vortex, will release in 2026, featuring previously unpublished poems by Larry Levis.
• David's most recent book is Prayer for My Daughter.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Larry grew up among migrant farm workers, and this was an important part of his life, an important part of his work." — David St. John ([02:12])
• “Poems can help enfold them and bring them back into a present of reflection.” — David St. John ([10:01])
• “The parenthesis on the sand, on the beach is really hopeful.” — David St. John ([38:49])
• “We all have so much to forgive, and not only each other, but ourselves.” — David St. John ([42:18])

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This episode offers a deep dive into the intertwined worlds of poetry, memory, and personal history, showcasing the enduring legacy of Larry Levis through the skilled hands of David St. John.

Transcript

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[Kevin Young]

Hi, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast. I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker Magazine. On this program, we invite a poet to select a poem from the New Yorker Archive to read and discuss. Then they read a poem of their own that's been published in the magazine. The poems we're featuring today also appear in the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025, available for purchase from the New Yorker Store or wherever you buy books today. My guest is David St. John, who's the author of many poetry collections and the recipient of honors including the Rome Fellowship and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the OB Hardison Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the George Drury Smith Award from Beyond Baroque. He's also the editor of Swirl and Vortex, a volume of collected poems by the late Larry Leviss, forthcoming in 2026. Welcome, David. Thanks so much for joining us.

[David St. John]

Kevin. It's wonderful to be here.

[Kevin Young]

So the first poem you've chosen to read, which is, I have to say, one of my favorite poems, is Picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard by Larry Leviss. What was it that drew you to this particular poem?

[David St. John]

Well, it's always been one of the most important poems for me, Larry's early work. It's the poem he chose to begin his third collection, the Dollmaker's Ghost. And that book has always been really compelling to me because in some ways it's a kind of litany of ghosts in his life, both familial but also the landscape in which he grew up. He grew up outside of Fresno, where I grew up. We knew each other from the time I was 18. He grew up on what his family always called the ranch, and it was grape vineyards for raisins, not for wine. One of the things about this poem that I love is that he grew up among migrant farm workers, and this was an important part of his life, an important part of his work. Phil Levine says this amazing thing in the documentary film about Larry, which is called Late Style of Fire, Larry Leviss, American Poet that the director Michelle Poulos and Larry's old friend Greg Donovan made. And Phil says, Larry grew up in a home that was on one side of the divide of the workers and the owners, but in fact he really lived on the other side. And I think that it's really an insightful thing.

[Kevin Young]

Well, let's hear the poem. Here's David St. John reading picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard by Larry Leviss.

[David St. John]

Picking grapes in an abandoned vineyard, picking grapes alone in the late autumn sun. A short curved knife in my hand, its blade silver from so many sharpenings, its handle black. I still have a scarlet where a friend sliced open my right index finger once in a cutting shed, the same kind of knife. The grapes drop into the pan and the gnats swarm over them as always. Fifteen years ago I worked this row of vines beside a dozen families up from Mexico. No one spoke English or wanted to. One woman who made an omelette with a sheet of tin and five light blue quail eggs, had a voice full of dusk and jail cells and bird calls. She spoke in Spanish to no one, as they all did. Their swearing was specific and polite. I remember two of them clearly. A man named T, 6ft 9 inches tall at the age of 62, who wore white spats into downtown Fresno each Saturday. Knight, an alcoholic giant whom the women loved. One chilled morning they found him dead outside the Rose Cafe. And Angel Dominguez, who came to work for my grandfather in 1910 and who saved for years to buy 20 acres of rotting Thompson seedless vines while the sun flared all one August he decided he was dying of a rare disease and spent his money and his last years on specialists who found nothing wrong. T. Laughed and, tipping back a bottle of Muscatel, said, Nothing's wrong, you're just dying. At 17, I discovered Parlier California, with its sad topless bar and its one Main street and its opium. I would stand still and chalk my cue stick in Johnny Polari's East Front pool hall and watch the room filling with tobacco smoke as the sun set through one window now all I hear are the vines rustling as I go from one to the next, the long canes holding up dry leaves reddening so late in the year. What the vines want must be this silence spreading over each town, over the dance halls and the dying parks and the police drowsing in their cruisers under the stars. What the men who worked here wanted was a drink strong enough to let out what laughter they had. I can still see the two of them. T. Smiles and lets his yellow teeth shine while angel, the serious one for whom death was a rare disease, purses his lips and looks down as if he is already mourning himself, a soft gray hat between his hands. Today, in honor of them, I press my thumb against the flat part of this blade and steady a bunch of red Malaga grapes with one hand, the way they showed me, and cut and close my eyes to hear them laugh at me again. And then hearing nothing, no one carry the grapes up to the solemn house where I was born.

[Kevin Young]

That was Picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard by Larry Leviss, which was originally published in the November 10, 1980, issue of the New Yorker. I love how this poem moves, I always have. And it's one long stanza, but also, I think, one big thought, if that makes sense. And the action of him cutting the vines and cutting those grapes, it sends him into a past that feels so present for him but also seems so much about loss and fate and the future, you know, it feels both particular to him. And we have these great figures, T and angel, who seem like angels in some way delivering the news from somewhere else in many ways. How do you reckon between the sort of memory that he's evoking and the big thoughts that emerge?

[David St. John]

One of the things that's always really fascinated me about Larry's poems is that, I mean, I think it's true of all poetry that it's about memory and recuperation of the past, and recuperation meaning in its healing way as well. To look back at things in our own experience that sometimes are jagged, disjointed, even troubling, that poems can help enfold them and bring them back into a present of reflection. And one of the things about the book, the Dollmaker's Ghost, is that it's one of the first times that Larry invites ghosts into his present. There's nothing ephemeral about the ghosts in Larry's poems. They're always material and they're always intimate in ways that aren't always comfortable, I think.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah.

[David St. John]

And one of the things that you'll notice about the poem, it has timestamps. And as you go down, it'll say, 15 years ago.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[David St. John]

It's very cinematic in how he's positioning you.

[Kevin Young]

Yes, yes, that's a great word.

[David St. John]

And then he refocuses on a tighter shot of two figures in the poem. And then he gives us the backdrop of t. This amazing, really larger than life figure.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[David St. John]

And then he goes down and he says, another timestamp at 17, I discover. And then the details about parlier.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and really quickly, in three lines, he gives a whole history of himself and sort of this other gap, you know, this lacuna that's not in the poem, but that is in others of his poems. And sort of is lurking all around the poems about sort of this unspoken addiction or loss and sort of where he's from and who he became. And just in the three lines, he manages to do that.

[David St. John]

That's absolutely right, Kevin. And one of the things that happens in Larry's poems is that Larry becomes a kind of ghostly inhabitant even of his own work. There's a kind of omniscience of the past, but a sense of looking forward to the person he became and will become. Even in the poems set in the past. And then again, right toward the end, he says today in honor of them. So he's always situating us in, quote, real time of the poem or the fictive time of the meditation, while always making sure he doesn't lose us. It's a kind of reflection, a kind of movement in memory that never loses the reader. In other words, it never disappears into a personal past. It always says, you're here with me.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I'm just so excited to talk about this poem because I think it's also. It's a clinic in narration. How do you narrate something? How do you tell a story that isn't one story, but many stories? And it's a story of the self, as we said. But also today, in honor of them. There's all those little moments of specificity and of familiarity that without, I think, claiming more than it is. Like you have a feeling that he has learned from them. And there's something about that honoring that, I think is throughout the poem, he uses humor that feels like it's part of that legacy. That moment where he leans back Tita's. And tipping back, break a bottle of muscatel. I mean, what a great break. Tipping back, said, nothing's wrong, another break, you're just dying. And then it goes at 17. And he's remembering his life, but also the danger that's lurking in addiction. And this pool hall, which there's a real. I don't know, sense to me, at least, of danger in the ordinary that I think he captures.

[David St. John]

Oh, that's a great way to put it, Kevin. And I think it's something you see in Levice's poems throughout. The way in which there's a latent danger in things and places. And his poems are so brilliant in their atmospheric details, but in the suggestion, it's always in the suggestion that the detail allows the reader to have. But I agree about this poem. It is absolutely a clinic in narration, as you said.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and the narrator, too, who we know of as him. And it doesn't have that sort of fiction of it being someone else. And in fact, it's a kind of origin story for him. The last lines I think of all the time. And that moment where he says, and close my eyes to hear them laugh at me again, which is a great line because it acknowledges that he was sort of this kid who didn't know what they know. And then hearing nothing, no one carry the grapes up into the solemn house where I was born. Yeah, that solemn house. I think that's a novel in and of itself. I mean, what has happened in this house that you'd rather be laughed out in the fields than in the solemnity? It feels to me.

[David St. John]

Oh, that's absolutely true. And in other of the poems and in some of the essays, you see that unpacked with greater detail. But certainly his relationship with his father, who was very austere, and the way in which Levis is always looking to get out of that house and into the fields with the workers. He has a sense of. I mean, I don't know if I should call it empathy, unity. There's something pervasive about his experience on the land, among the vineyards and the orchards with these men, that gives him peace, Kevin. It puts him at ease and has a peace for him that I don't think he knew in his childhood. And I think that it's why he often returns to this landscape and this community that he regards, it seems to me, as his second family.

[Kevin Young]

It's interesting because I think he manages also to be in the honoring, to understand, I think, the distance required, even if it's a distance of time, but it's also a distance of they are having a slightly different experience than him. And it's his house, you know, that he's returning to. And the title. I mean, anyone else wouldn't give away everything in the title. And instead he's like picking grapes in an abandoned vineyard. You know, that's such a crucial part. Like he's kind of picking grapes in the afterlife of all of this. And so he's sort of both a survivor telling a story about what he's seen, but also, I think, a person trying to reckon with what it means to survive and have, I think, in some way, guilt about it. I wonder, too, if you think of the poem as an elegy and if so, for what.

[David St. John]

Oh, I do. And I think that one of the things I love about what you just said is, is there's something posthumous about all of Levice's poems. There's something in which he understands his. I don't want to say aloneness or solitude, but solitariness in this profound way. In some ways, you read through all of Larry's work, as I've been doing for the Collected Poems, and many. Well, don't forget his second book is called the Afterlife. That's his second book. So he understands the power of a very present ghost. Not that he thinks of himself as a ghost, but he has that permeability. He's able to move through memory and the past in a way that reinhabits a landscape. And I think what's elegiac about this poem, of course, it's for some aspect of himself, but also for a period of time that felt more fluid across what become very strict borders. And I think that it's one of the things, as you're saying, he's very aware of in the honoring of this past. He understands how fortunate he was and how fortunate he feels just his good luck to grow up in this very rural landscape. And yet he understands that it connected him to the earth, I think he would say.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah.

[David St. John]

And to the world of experience that otherwise increasingly became unavailable to him.

[Kevin Young]

Right. Well. And the pool hall kind of is one version of that.

[David St. John]

Yes.

[Kevin Young]

Which we can picture almost from a noir movie or something like that. It has that quality of it. And I love how you say cinematic. I want to think together with you about collecting. And you've mentioned Swirl and Vortex, his collected poems, the one you're doing. And it includes previously unpublished poems, two of which we were really lucky to publish in the New Yorker, one called Prayer and one called Homage to Willie Mays. I mean, these are both tremendous poems, I think. What's been your experience working on that and putting together a collected. You know, I did the Lucille Clifton Collective with the late Michael S. Glazer and it's such a powerful thing to look through someone's work, you know, and to me, that was so poignant because you see the process. And so I'm curious about if we can reflect, you know, on his process, but then on your process of putting together the collected and finding these unknown poems.

[David St. John]

Well, in some ways, I had the advantage of Larry would always send me his poems, and usually individually in letters. I did the same with Larry. And then when we'd have manuscripts, putting together manuscripts, we would send them and say, all right, tell me what sucks? And so I had the advantage of knowing his handwriting, which became increasingly illegible.

[Kevin Young]

Oh, wow.

[David St. John]

But the drafts, when he'd send me poems, he would mark potential revisions. He would write alternate passages. I have to say, I had two amazing associate editors, James Ciano, wonderful poet, and L A Johnson, Liz Johnson. And they became these archival sleuths. But the process was archaeological. I mean, there was a lot of excavation going into those archives, just all the boxes and boxes of folders. And there would be particular poems like Prayer, for example, folders with drafts and drafts. And, you know, in the case of Prayer, which I think is really one of his major poems, there were decisions that I had to make in terms of what he had decided. But because we had just known each other so long, I could just sort of slip into Larry head for a moment and think, what's he saying here?

[Kevin Young]

It's really great to hear you talk about that process. And I know people will be so curious how this tremendous poet, who I think gets more and more important by the day, by the year, that we see him as major in ways that maybe he knew he was, maybe he didn't, I don't know. But to me, seem really only to grow. And your book will surely help cement that.

[David St. John]

I hope that it's a way for people to frame differently. His achievement, I think.

[Kevin Young]

More from my conversation with David St John after the break.

[David St. John]

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people, people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.

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[Kevin Young]

David welcome back.

[David St. John]

Thank you.

[Kevin Young]

Now, in our May 9, 1977 issue, the New Yorker published your poem the Shore, which you'll read for us momentarily. Is there anything you want to let readers know before you read it for us?

[David St. John]

Yeah, actually there is. It's the title poem of my second book. And I was living in Baltimore at the time, teaching at Johns Hopkins, and I had begun to spend more time on the Atlantic shore. But I'd grown up spending time on the California shore, especially that part of the world, sort of from Big Sur up to Mendocino, all those coastlines. But I began to have a sense of these alternate coastlines, these alternate shores. And I began to think about how important to me the California coastline had been. And I wanted to think about what it meant that I was on one coastline, on one side of the country, and looking back, really looking back in memory. But I also was framing this whole book in terms of the disillusion of a relationship. And so there's a you who figures in fairly explicitly through the poems of the book. And this poem, the title poem, actually became part of a choral symphony that I worked on with the amazing composer Frank Takeli. And it was a fabulous experience for me, sure. But this, the poem the Shore, really, it was the place where I was able to find a vocabulary for the rest of the poems in the book and a way to think about what we think of as endings or boundaries. And I love the idea of the shore, the beach that is indeterminate, that it's changing tides change where the land ends and the ocean begins. And I began to think about how that was so much a metaphor for my own experience that things were never sliced off. There are no clean cuts in experience. Things are far more permeable. Things reflect each other. We look forward as we look back.

[Kevin Young]

Here's David St. John reading his poem the Shore.

[David St. John]

The Shore so the tide forgets as morning grows too far, delivered as the boles of rock and wood run dry. What is left seems pearled and lit as those cases of the museum stood lit with milk jade, rows of opaque vases streaked with orange and yellow smoke. You found a lavender boat, a single figure poling upstream, baskets of pale fish wedged between his legs. Today the debris of winter stands stacked against the walls. The coils of kelp lie scattered across the floor. The oil fire smokes. You turn down the lantern hung on its nail outside the boats aligned like sentinels here beside the blue depot walking the pier, you can see the way the shore approximates the dream, how distances repeat their depths above these tables and panes of water as climbing the hills above the harbor up to the lupine drifting among the lichen mask pines. The night is pocked with lamps lit on every boat offshore, galleries of floating stars below on its narrow tracks shelved into the cliff's face, the train begins its slide down to the warehouses by the harbor loaded with diesel, coal, paychecks, whiskey, bedsheets, slabs of ice for the fish, for the men. You lean on my arm as once I watched you lean at the window, the bookstalls below stretched a mile to the quay, the afternoon crowd picking over the novels and histories you walked out as you walked out last night onto the stone porch, dusk reddened the walls, the winds sliced off the reefs, the vines of the gourds shook on their lattice. You talked about that night you stood behind the black pane of the French window watching my father read some long passage of a famous voyager's book. You hated that voice filling the room, its light so tonight we make a soft parenthesis upon the sand's black bed. In that dream we share there is one shore where we look out upon nothing and the sea our whole lives until turning from those waves we find one shore where we look out upon nothing and the earth our whole lives where what is left between shore and sky is traced in the vague wake of the stars, the sandpipers whistling what we forgive. If you wake soon wake me.

[Kevin Young]

That was the shore by David St John, so beautifully read and I love hearing it after hearing you read the Levis and there are some echoes there I can hear, but I also love how particular it is, and you had said that there was a U in the poem and I had the experience of reading it where there's a moment toward the beginning where you think there's just a you, a you as an I, and I love how that comes across well done, that we are sort of with this you that could be a self for a moment. And then there's that sort of, you lean on my arm as once I watched you lean at the window. And then there's this kind of. I don't know how else to call it, but a kind of. I think of as a betrayal of admitting, of hating this father's voice as it says it's light. I mean, it's something to me that is a kind of sign or portend of more. And then it says, so tonight we make a soft parenthesis upon the sans black bed. A beautiful line. And it so incorporates and thinks about sort of language, the way that language is impermanent. And also that this you. And I feel a little tenuous at that moment. All of that I know you meant to do and thought about extraordinarily. But how do you hear it now, like that parenthesis and that kind of sense of sound, but also of impermanence?

[David St. John]

Well, I think that the impermanence throughout the course of the book then becomes more specifically articulated in different poems. And I love using the second person for the sleight of hand it makes possible at times. And I love the sense of it also being an address to the reader and a woman who I grew up with. Our fathers were best friends, and we lived in the same neighborhood. And her family life was complicated and her father had a temper. And so it was a household in which, at times, was not comfortable for her. And I didn't know this. I mean, we were in elementary school together, junior high school and high school. You know, I left town. But I saw her once when I was back for a visit, and she said, did you know that when I was 7 and 8 and I had to leave my house, she lived only a few blocks away. She said, I would walk over to your house and I would look inside the living room. And she said, the thing that I found intolerable was seeing your father and seeing how calm he was. And times just, you know, you'd be sitting across the room and he'd be reading something to you. And she said, I hated you for that.

[Kevin Young]

Wow.

[David St. John]

Yeah, that's really powerful. And so, you know, when I was writing the Poems of the Shore, I think it was within a year that I had actually run into her in Fresno and she had told me that story.

[Kevin Young]

Wow. It's complicated even in the poem, but what resonance that provides to know that it is not like, dislike, but almost envy, like.

[David St. John]

Oh, absolutely.

[Kevin Young]

It's a hate born of kind of. I don't know, something more than envy, even.

[David St. John]

Well, a sense of. I mean, in her own life, the profound disappointment and sense of betrayal in her own family, I think. You know, I once said this thing in a workshop that I didn't know I'd said. And somebody made a little, like, bumper sticker of it. And I said, everything in my poems invented, even the things that are real.

[Kevin Young]

Sure.

[David St. John]

And, of course, that's what we all do. But that was a moment where talking about what was at work in the shore, that was a detail that was so. In terms of someone having been wounded.

[Kevin Young]

Yes.

[David St. John]

And, of course, in relationships we all understand, we bring not only our own woundings, but our partners bring their woundings. And there's some that seem unreparable, and there's some that you try to arch over that particular event. And so for me, that was the right deal to introduce before the speaker. And the. You make that parenthesis.

[Kevin Young]

So is the parenthesis healing is the parenthesis. You know, a parenthesis is kind of out of time. Right. Or, you know, I remember in grammar school they'd say, like, you could not read that part. And of course, then you. In the poem, toward the end, if you aren't looking at it like we might be, there is that moment is traced in the vague wake of parentheses, the stars, the sandpipers whistling on parentheses. What we forgive. I mean, what a brilliant moment. So the parentheses come back? In a way, yes. So is it that. Is it the world that's being made into a parenthesis? Or is it the selves or is it their unity that the parentheses bring.

[David St. John]

Us to my sense? I mean, I don't want to, sure. But I think that the parenthesis on the sand, on the beach is really hopeful. I mean, by definition, just the two parentheses include nothing, but may include everything. And so that's how I thought of the two bodies on the beach.

[Kevin Young]

How beautiful. Well, and I think it has that sense of loss we were talking about with Levis. But this ending, which I think is exquisite, where what is left between shore and sky is traced in the vague wake of the stars, the sandpipers whistling. What we forgive. And someone else would end it there, I think, and go, yeah, that was. But then you have this gnomic, beautiful italics. If you wake soon, wake me. How do you hear that? Wake now. And you know, to me, I'll just show my hands a little bit. The wake is both that sense of being awake, the wake, of course, of shore and water, but also our sense of a funereal wake. All of the above, I assume. But how did that come to you?

[David St. John]

I think that in the storms of relationships, there are also kinds of darknesses from which we need to awaken. In this case, I wanted to suggest the speaker and the youth, still with a sense of proximity, closeness, intimacy. I wanted that to be the presiding sense of the fact that they are together and that in relationships, people share dreams and dreams, not only aspirational, but sometimes all dreams are not good dreams. And I think that there are times when, I mean, I'll just speak of myself, I mean, where I feel like I've been caught in a dream that. And actually, I think this is something Larry writes about all the time. Dreams have kinds of swirls and vortexes, let's say, and they suck you into them. And there are dreams of darkness. And I think that we may think of night dreams happening in the dark, but not all dreams in the dark are themselves. Some of those are luminous. And what I wanted the ending to really suggest is we all live at some edge or shore of ourselves that's always shifting, always moving. And in whatever is happening in this particular dreaming, it's this amazing thing. I mean, the stars are out, the sandpipers in the morning are whistling. I wanted it to feel at least somewhat hopeful.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. Is that the forgiveness? Because it sort of begins with forgetting, you know, and it's the tide who forgets, which I love. And then we, in a big sense, I think, forget. Is that how you hear it?

[David St. John]

Absolutely, Kevin. And I mean, that's the hope, you know? I mean, we all have so much to forgive, and not only each other, but ourselves.

[Kevin Young]

I really appreciate you spending so much time with us talking about poetry, and it's been a real treat having you.

[David St. John]

It's been such a great pleasure.

[Kevin Young]

The shore by David St John, as well as Larry Leviss's Picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard can be found on new yorker.com and in the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025. Out now. Swirl and Vortex, the Collected Poems of Larry Leviss is forthcoming in 2026. David St. John's most recent book is Prayer for My Daughter.

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You may subscribe to this podcast, the Fiction podcast, the Writer's Voice podcast, and the politics and more podcasts by Searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. You can hear more poetry read by the authors on newyorker.com and the New Yorker app, available from the App Store or from Google Play. The theme music is the Corner by Chief Zion Otunde. Adjua, courtesy of Stretch Music and Rope a Dope. The New Yorker Poetry Podcast is produced by Chloe Procinos with help from Hannah Eisenman. Hi, I'm Susan Glaser. I'm Jane Mayer.

[David St. John]

And I'm Evan Osnos.

[Kevin Young]

And we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.

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For me, this is the water cooler. This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes. Now, that's so true, because, first of all, we are actually friends in real life. But I can't wait till Fridays to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps.

[Kevin Young]

I also think, though, occasionally we get.

[David St. John]

Somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter. For if you get a great historian.

[Kevin Young]

Who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening today.

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So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway, please join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.

[David St. John]

From prx.